Paulie Malignaggi Turns Up the Heat on McGregor
Former boxer Paulie Malignaggi continues to hog the limelight following his apparent falling out with Conor McGregor. In case you’ve been living under a rock, the current ill-feeling between The Notorious and Malignaggi started after McGregor’s photographer took a snap of the Dubliner standing over a prone Malignaggi and captioned it “there (sic) no conspiracy, there (sic) no photoshop, just pure unadulterated power.”
Many in the world of boxing and UFC feel that posting such a photo of a former world champion was severely lacking in respect. Here’s a guy who came into the McGregor camp with the sole intention of helping him prepare for the biggest fight of his career. And after only two sparring sessions, this photo leak made him look like the proverbial sparring chump.
Conor himself has stayed quiet on the whole affair preferring to let others do the talking and Malignaggi has duly obliged. We’ve all read his take on the episode and his assertion that the photo was taken immediately after McGregor pushed him to the ground in order to get himself a break. No wonder why he’s feeling less than happy with the McGregor camp.
There are many that agree with Malignaggi, saying that it was a poorly thought out attempt at playing mind games with Mayweather. They believe that the McGregor camp planned this and used the image and the lack of discussion on the topic from their side to create this air of mystique about The Notorious’ boxing skills.
Now there are very few in the UFC that think McGregor will get destroyed in the ring by Mayweather, but then again, there aren’t many that think the Irishman can win either. Interestingly though, McGregor’s odds have yet to be affected by the fallout from Malignaggi’s comments as BetStars still has The Notorious at 4/1 odds for the win.
Of course, that could change in the time that it takes to get to the end of this article, but the fact remains that those that decide the odds seem to have taken Malignaggi’s comments with a grain of salt, which suggests that either they know something we don’t or they’re just a lot smarter on the uptake than the rest of us.
Could it be that this entire episode is a fabrication on McGregor’s part? Could Malignaggi be part of some masterful bluff to lull Mayweather into a false sense of security? We sincerely hope so because that would suggest that the fight may, in fact, be closer than many expect.
However, it’s probably much more likely that McGregor did indeed push Malignaggi to the floor and that the release of the photo has riled up the former boxer so much that he’s doing his level best to destroy public confidence in McGregor by slating his boxing skills. Regardless of the non-disclosure agreement that he signed relating to his work at the camp, Malignaggi seems to feel the need to let his side of the story be known, especially now that his reputation is on the line.
The lack of a comeback from the McGregor camp suggests that they’re really not bothered about taking Malignaggi’s comments to heart. But this also raises another question: When has Conor McGregor ever stayed quiet when someone was talking trash about him? That’s right, never. There’s far more to this whole sparring session fallout than meets the eye and the truth is that we may never know the entire story. For us though, we’re taking all this with that grain of salt, too, and hope that the big fight night lives up to its billing.
